The Indian Ocean by Michael Pearson

Author:Michael Pearson
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Indian Ocean Region, Australia & New Zealand, Asia, General, Indian Ocean Region - History, Indian Ocean - Navigation - History, World, Indian Ocean, History
ISBN: 9780415214896
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2003-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

Once the Portuguese arrived they engaged in vigorous competition with their Muslim rivals. The situation in Siam in the middle of the sixteenth century was well described in a letter by the adventurer-turned-religious Fernão Mendes Pinto. He told his Jesuit fellows that there were various religious beliefs followed in Siam, but the Muslims were doing very well. Already in the capital there were seven mosques, with foreign cacizes, and 30,000 hearths of Muslims. Proselytisation proceeded apace. The king, however, maintained a hands-off attitude to the whole matter: 'The king lets everyone do what they want; they can be Muslim or gentile, for he says he is king of nothing more than their bodies.'

The Christian missionaries tried to work from the top. This worked well in Japan, but not so much elsewhere. In India the Jesuits hoped to convert the Mughal emperor Akbar, after which the rest of India would follow. Hence the ecstatic claims from time to time that the Great Mughal was listening to them, was favourably inclined to them, was now no longer a Muslim, and indeed on occasion that his conversion was imminent. Alas, the hopes were all ill-founded, showing no doubt a Counter-Reformation failure to understand how Akbar could find some merit in all the great religious traditions. As was ruefully noted, he remained as Muslim as he had ever been. So also at a more humble level in Goa, where they encouraged the elite to convert, offering them jobs and other favours in return. In 1548 Lakshman decided to convert. He was a great catch. The bishop performed the ceremony, the governor stood as his godfather, and, now called Luquas de Sá, he was given an important government post.

Letters home to Europe from the religious often complain of the lack of support they received from the secular authorities. Most Spanish and Portuguese governors and captains put political, and especially economic, matters before conversions. Indeed, the efforts of the missionaries were often hindered and obstructed, rather than facilitated, by their fellow Christians. In many areas of seaborne Asia the Portuguese in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had unenviable reputations. This was both at an official and individual level. The Portuguese tried forcibly to monopolise trade in spices and some other products, and direct other Asian trade, forcing all sea trade to pay customs duties to them at their forts. Most sea trade in the Arabian Sea, and increasingly also in island southeast Asia, was handled by Muslims; this political and economic conflict spilt over into religious hostility, indeed the two were symbiotic and fed on each other.

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